Pro-beer campaign heckles wine in print

Whenever a slightly controversial/deliberately antagonistic campaign
is released, many would argue that the campaign gets a tick when those
who are bound to be outraged by it come out and show their outrage.

Almost without fail, St Matthew in the City’s ‘progressive’ billboards
roil the religious types. And DB Export Dry’s ‘Great Wine Depression’
TV ad, a light-hearted parody of the beginnings of New Zealand wine
snobbery that was made by Colenso BBDO and The Sweet Shop, also appeared
to have its desired effect when a couple of wine lovers took the wine-bashing to heart. Well, now they’ve got a few new print ads to get up in arms about as well.

To
ensure “fewer Kiwi males suffer from wine”, the magazine and press
campaign highlights the awkward discomfort wine continues to inflict on
men, including an instructional ad that coaches men through what to do
when handed the dreaded wine list.

Ken Sheldrick, the 79-year old cellarmaster for the Wine and Food Society of Auckland, told the Herald
the ads were nonsense and said “the macho, age-old phrase that real men
drink beer was juvenile”.

Ironically, while commenting on it, he
said ”it’s so childish it doesn’t even bear commenting on because
everyone knows people have been drinking wine since Roman times.

“New Zealand has become much more sophisticated and for adverts like that to appear just puts us back in the dark ages.”

Despite a few aggrieved commentators decrying the continued use of foolish men in advertising,
the tongue-in-cheek ‘attack’ campaign appears to be doing as intended
and selling more of the beer (Russell Browne, marketing manager for DB
Export and emerging brands, said it sold out of the newly redesigned DB
Export boxes soon after the campaign launched).

“DB Export Dry
holds a special place in Kiwi consumers’ hearts but over the years we
have all been negligent in forgetting Morton Coutts’ masterful brew,”
says Browne. “The best campaigns aren’t only the ones that happen to be
funny. This campaign resonates with our consumer target perfectly due to
the humour being based on their actual experiences.”

DB Export’s brand manager Honor Dillon said it’s still in the very
early stages of the Export Dry re-launch and some of the data is yet to
come through. But sales to date have been very positive, with an
increase in value share and rate of sale on both packs in all accounts
throughout New Zealand, some flattering third party acknowledgements of
the TV ad (“This is easily the best ad created by NZ in a long time”
from Radio Hauraki and “This is a beer ad worthy of Super Bowl airtime”
from Ad Week; and a good amount of PR awareness around the campaign due to the uproar from wine lovers).

A more comprehensive evaluation of the re-launch will be available next month once more data has come through.